Minor victory thread

Eriol

Eriol

HCGLNS said:
Wait Mage Armour? What happened to Fire Bolt at the goblin? Did it get edited while I was napping or is this one of those days.
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;)

I noticed my error and stealth-edited it. You're right, cantrips don't trigger it, but 1st-level spells do, and as Bubble said, Mage Armor is a 1st-level spell, and honestly, just as (if not more) plausible. And you're right too that the DM controls when they roll the d20:
Immediately after you cast a sorcerer spell of 1st level or higher, the DM can have you roll a d20. If you roll a1, roll on the W ild Magic Surge table to create a random magical effect.
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Note that it's up to the DM when to roll the d20, but the effect "just happens" and is not up to the DM (more or less... they're the DM, ANYTHING can happen). But considering how RARELY you're going to get the surge in the first place, my understanding is that sorc players want to surge, and given that they only have a few spell slots per day... they're pretty much always wanting to roll on it, otherwise it's pretty much not going to happen, since it's only 1/20 chance by default.

Short answer: my original scenario is plausible, hence my comment about most DMs just having that option be a re-roll at low levels.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

We were going to get my father-in-law a new computer for Christmas to replace his curbside hand-me-down, but with all that's been going on lately, the $600-700 price tag was going to be too much. But then that (time-sensitive) deal I mentioned earlier came along...
...so yeah, we jumped on it, and finally got him to step up to something better:

newfilcpu.png


So yeah, for about $210 total (we sprung $30 extra to double the RAM), we upgraded him from a 1-core AMD w/ 4GB RAM to a 4-core Xeon with Hyperthreading and 12GB RAM. His AOL is gonna absolutely fly.
His new hard drive shrunk from the old 250GB to 160GB, and his graphics took a step backwards (Radeon 4xxx to 3xxx) but he wasn't using more than about 40GB HDD anyway and I can move the old GPU over if needed. He'll deal. Plus there's room for 3 more HDDs if it comes to that.

Ironically, until I went to capture that graphic, I hadn't realized that he didn't even move up a generation in computing. His new computer is from exactly the same time period, it's just one that's from SIGNIFICANTLY higher up on the performance chain than his old one.

--Patrick
 
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Tinwhistler

Tinwhistler

The website redesign I was whining about a couple weeks ago is complete.

Everyone I've shown the new site to has liked it. I've added some new features:
  • html5 video.
  • When you're looking a review of a whistle, you can click a link on a recording to go directly to the sheet music of that tune
  • When you're looking at a tune that I've recorded, you can click a link to go to the review of that whistle
  • Powerful searching/sort/filter capabilities that make the site much easier to navigate
  • direct linking to both tunes and reviews.
I'm happy with it. Going to put it up on my host tonight.
 
Tinwhistler

Tinwhistler

Minor Hiccup: I've had the same godaddy host for years and years, and I'm on an old server.

To upgrade to MVC5, I had to create a hosting account on an updated server.

Now I have 12 days to get everything moved over to the new server and make sure it works before the old hosting acct disappears.

Thankfully, I have an old domain I can use for testing in the interim before flipping the big switch.
 
Tinwhistler

Tinwhistler

The new website is live!! :):)
Things I had to do:

  • rebuild my SQL database on an entirely new server, including data (luckily, I have SSMS, and "script database" works wonderfully)
  • Point entity framework at the new server
  • point an old domain to the new server for testing
  • Set up web deploy. First time I've ever done that. I usually just copy project files by hand. The internet says Godaddy sucks at this. But it worked fine to for me--with one caveat: their sll certificate is an internally generated one, so I get the "untrusted certificate" error. But I know what this means, and I ain't skeered.
  • Copy my entire website content over (approx 2000 files, including audio and video)
  • muck with my web.config after Godaddy threw a "disallowed by group policy" error. (MVC likes to compile on the fly. Godaddy doesn't give access to the compiler .exe for security reasons. Had to set my publish settings to precompile).
  • Muck around more with my web.config (had to set trust level to "full" even though they have a web interface where I ostensibly already did that).
  • Muck around with jquery.ui icon file locations. Modern .Net likes to "bundle" css and javascript files into giant one-file versions of the same thing. But this bundle gets put in root. jquery.ui references their icon file under the .css folder. But this .css location changes after bundling. This was annoying to debug.
But now it's done.
New website is (temporarily) at http://wandering-whistler.com
Old website is still at www.tinwhistler.com

(first time loading the new website is a beast, because it has to download and cache a shit ton of js and css because of bootstrap, jquery, jquery-ui, and jqgrid--and I'm using the .min versions--gotta figure out a better solution here).
Once I'm convinced all the kinks are worked out, I'll move the DNS entries from tinwhistler.com to the new site.

DNS can sometimes take a while to change over, so you may not see the new site a the wandering-whistler domain for 24 hours. But it changed over for me in about 5 minutes :)

Lot of new features. Here are some important ones:
Linking directly to tunes: The Butterfly
Inline html5 audio (since MIDI is no longer supported by anyone any longer).
Inline html5 video (which you can see on the tune linked above)
Cross-linking to reviews of specific whistles from the tune page (and vice versa)
linking directly to reviews: Chieftain low D (with same inline audio and video)
Sorting, filtering, and dynamic loading of sounds samples of tunes all on the tune page.
sorting and filtering reviews by model and maker.

And, I've removed google and project wonderful ads. The ads used to bring me between $600/800 a year. Now, I'm lucky if I get a check every 2-3 years. So, no real point in having them any longer.
 
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Tinwhistler

Tinwhistler

Dave said:
Looks great, man! I love the ability to play the music without having to download a file.
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Thanks!

10 years ago, adding links to mp3s was kind of par for the course. But html 5 (which has been a standard for like 3 freaking years now) makes inline audio and video pretty simple. That was one of the big motivators for the site redesign. That, and I have a good pro-grade webcam so I can start taking video for the site.

And the fact that all of my midi players have been deprecated for security reasons, so I have to jump through hoops to listen to tunes from the old site nowadays.
 
Tinwhistler

Tinwhistler

Added Bootstrap to the site, so now it looks pretty good on mobile, too. Still got a couple of things to tweak (primarily the help dialogs and dynamic HTML5 audio) so everything looks good on mobile, but I'm pretty pleased with it so far
 
Eriol

Eriol

I got fired today! Not kidding. But I saw it coming (reasons), so it'll be OK.

So I get to plough the snow tomorrow without wondering if I'll be on time for work. Woot?


Yes a very mixed set of feelings on this one, but ultimately it will be for the good, hence why posted in this thread. No more details than that because "The Internet" and saying more might be bad if somebody had AMAZING google-fu.
 
Tinwhistler

Tinwhistler

Eriol said:
I got fired today! Not kidding. But I saw it coming (reasons), so it'll be OK.

So I get to plough the snow tomorrow without wondering if I'll be on time for work. Woot?


Yes a very mixed set of feelings on this one, but ultimately it will be for the good, hence why posted in this thread. No more details than that because "The Internet" and saying more might be bad if somebody had AMAZING google-fu.
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Don't know if I should hug or brofist.

I spent the evening minifying css and javascript, adding custom gzip compressors to my web apis, reducing file sizes of certain huge (1mb) images on my site, and generally preparing it for public consumption. It's a freaking challenge to get a passing grade from http://www.webpagetest.org when using .net and IIS as your web environment. I had to stop when I started writing custom http modules to gzip my favicon.ico file, and tell myself "you've done enough, son."

Yesterday, I added Bootstrap to the site, so now it looks amazing on my phone.
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

I'm awful at writing queries. Creating a thing is one skill, pitching/selling it is another.

After some frustration, and with this project being something I've cared about for over a decade and a half, I went "fine! I'll make my own kind of query, with blackjack and hookers!" And it came out pretty good. It still needs some editing and tweaking here and there, but I tried writing it in a way that would get my attention if someone else said it to me, instead of following guidelines. Hopefully it'll work out? But now I want to try that approach to the other couple of manuscripts I have lying around, just to see what I come up with.

Also, I cleared out the kitchen side island and turned it into what I called a tea station for all my wife's tea and tea accessories. She loved it and couldn't stop gushing when she came home from work, though when she got to the other side of it she appropriately renamed it the "Tea Bar." And just looking at it ... yes, that makes much more sense. I don't know why "station" was the work that came to my head and stuck.
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

Zero Esc said:
Also, I cleared out the kitchen side island and turned it into what I called a tea station for all my wife's tea and tea accessories. She loved it and couldn't stop gushing when she came home from work, though when she got to the other side of it she appropriately renamed it the "Tea Bar." And just looking at it ... yes, that makes much more sense. I don't know why "station" was the work that came to my head and stuck.
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Pics, please? :)
 
strawman

strawman

jwhouk said:
Just found out that my insurance is paid for/in effect through the end of the month.
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Insurance through companies is almost always (in the US, at least) strictly month by month, so if you leave a job on the 2nd, you'll always have coverage until the end of the month.
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

PatrThom said:
It tastes good and gives one a reason to go on living.

--Patrick
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That reminds me, one of the last thins I'll be hauling out of here will be the coffee pot and grinder, No way in hell am I giving up the good stuff. Also going to keep the kettle and teapot. I learned how to make a proper British cuppa, so I'm not giving that up, either.
 
fade

fade

Staff member
I apparently lack the sophisticated palate necessary for tea appreciation. I've had the cheap and the so-called good, and tea in England itself, and it all tastes like tea to me. Coffee on the other hand...
 
Tress

Tress

fade said:
I apparently lack the sophisticated palate necessary for tea appreciation. I've had the cheap and the so-called good, and tea in England itself, and it all tastes like tea to me. Coffee on the other hand...
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I have the same experience in reverse. I love many different types of tea, but coffee is all the same to my taste buds.
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

Tress said:
I have the same experience in reverse. I love many different types of tea, but coffee is all the same to my taste buds.
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Try some Central/South American next to some Indonesian. There's definitely a difference. And the house blend I had to get this week is waaay different from the single origin I usually try to get.
 
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